TND – Oh Woe is Me (and other non-dilemma dilemmas)

July 29, 2011

It’s not a secret that I love summer. It’s not just the fact that for a brief period of time I’m actually warm all the time (except at work where I wear wool scarves and hard warmers). It’s also that there’s pretty much nothing that shows up at the farmer’s market that I don’t want to (and do) buy in egregious quantities.

I am so known/notorious for this that at least one of the vendors that I go to all the time (seriously – they know me so well they’ll give me things on credit when I’ve bought more than I have cash for in my wallet that day) teases me that she could find my house by following the trail of tomatoes. As if I’d ever waste a summer tomato on the ground like that. Also, I’m not sure she realizes that what I buy on Monday will only last me through Tuesday evening, and that I go buy more on Thursdays.

The thing is though, when all the soft summer fruits and vegetables are in season – peaches, nectarines, blueberries, raspberries, tomatoes, corn, cucumbers – I never want to do anything to them. I keep seeing recipes for things to do with all your fresh summer produce – zucchini bread, corn and tomato pie, a corn casserole that’s essentially macaroni & cheese made with corn instead of pasta, and blueberry crumbles and blackberry crisps and peach ice creams. They all look and sound amazing, but when they’re ripe the fruits and vegetables themselves are so good that I never want to bury their splendor with much of anything beyond a sprinkle of salt and pepper. And then, of course, when they’re out of season what you can get hold of isn’t worth making a recipe where the produce is the star (rather than just a supporting actor). It’s a dilemma.

That being said – I left the tomatoes alone (because really the only recipe I’m willing to contemplate cooking a summer ripe tomato for is the Goat Cheese & Tomato Tart and that’s coming up in a menu later this summer), but turned the corn into fritters mostly because my recipe for corn fritters is essentially an insane quantity of corn just barely held together with a little batter. It’s like eating corn on the cob, but in pancake form, and even I can’t find an argument against that. I also threw peaches into my slaw because it seemed silly to use a tropical fruit when walking up to a farmer’s market this week means being greeted with a waft of heady honey peachy fragrance before you can even see the awnings of the stalls.

Mango Slaw (but made with peaches)
Peaches are just starting to show up at the farmer’s markets, and I wanted to test my theory that they’d be a good seasonal substitute for mango in this slaw. I also altered the recipe a little bit this time around – I used about ¾ of a head of napa cabbage, and ¼ of a head of red cabbage. I wanted a little more crunch to my slaw and I felt like the napa cabbage was so fragile that the fruit kind of overwhelmed it last time. I also used less dressing this time around.

Verdict. Peaches are a great seasonal variation on mango. And, I liked the extra crunch and color of the red cabbage.

Corn Fritters
Normally I’d serve buttermilk biscuits with a meal like this, but it was over 100 degrees when I was planning the menu and even the thought of turning the oven on was enough to sap me of my will to live (of course now it’s in the mid-70s and would have been perfectly reasonable). Plus, corn has just come into season here and I want every excuse in the world to eat it.